SOMERSET, Massachusetts--U.S. President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that climate change is an emergency but stopped short of a formal declaration, announcing a modest package of executive actions and promising more aggressive efforts.
Biden made the comments during a visit to Massachusetts and as a historic heat wave batters Europe and the United States. Some 100 million Americans from New York City to Las Vegas will be under heat warnings this week.
"Climate change is literally an existential threat to our nation and to the world," Biden said. "This is an emergency, an emergency, and I will look at it that way."
The announcements included new funding for cooling centers and pushing for new off-shore wind projects in the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico. Still, those actions fall short of demands by Democratic lawmakers and environmental activists who want Biden to formally declare a climate emergency, which would enable the use of the Defense Production Act to ramp up production of a wide range of renewable energy products and systems.
Biden told reporters that he would decide shortly on whether to make such a declaration. "I'm running the traps on the ... authority I have," he told reporters as he traveled home from Massachusetts. "I'll make that decision soon."
Biden is under increasing pressure after conservative Democratic Senator Joe Manchin said last week he was not ready to support key climate provisions in Congress, a critical loss in the evenly divided Senate. Biden has not spoken with Manchin since, he told reporters on Wednesday.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency will provide $2.3 billion in funding to help states build cooling centers to deal with excessive heat and to tackle other impacts of climate change, the White House said as it announced the largest ever investment to the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities Program. New funding could expand flood control, shore up utilities, retrofit buildings, and help low-income families pay for heating and cooling costs.
Biden also announce new support for the domestic offshore wind industry. The administration has identified 700,000 acres for possible offshore wind energy development in the Gulf of Mexico, the White House said.
